Talk:Pole sitting

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Delete proposal

Delete patent nonesense! Jschwa1 12:57, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- The above comment refers to a previous version of this page. Kappa 14:17, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Dates of fad

Why does the article say the fad started in 1924 when the Recent Additions page speaks of an 1842 occurence???

Yes, and the article also mentions that a record was broken in 1930, but that the fad lasted from 1924 to 1929. Can this be fixed? Badagnani (talk) 06:26, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Record

According to numerous web pages, the record is held by Frank Perkins and is 399 days. http://www.trivia-library.com/b/biography-of-father-of-flagpole-sitting-saint-simeon-stylites-part-2.htm

Unfortunately this is confused by the fact that there is also an urban legend using Frank's name which states that he came down 8 hours shy of the previous record, and his girlfriend left him, and some other nonsense. Snopes says in their write-up about this urban legend that Frank Perkins is in fact the real record holder but the rest of the legend is false.

I wouldn't want to think poor Frank sat up on that pole for 399 days only to be forgotten! I don't know anything about editing wikipedia but if someone out there does, please confirm this information and add it. Thanks. 67.168.84.233 17:14, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

yes.

Cleanup Requested

"The gimmick he pioneered was ruined by people trying to cash in on his idea without being willing to take it all the way. Kelly died of a heart attack, penniless, on the street nearby the same movie theater at which he performed his first 13 day sit, clutching a binding of newspaper clippings from his time as the king of flagpole sitting. [I made this account to do Alvin Kelly some justice on wikipedia, everything is true, check archive.org or yourememberedthat.com or bathroomreader.com, please cite this for me, I don't have the time to learn how to properly cite these additions when I will never use the knowledge again as I don't plan to work on anything else on this site]"

That is heavily biased. Whilst there does seem to be some useful information, it lacks objectivity. In addition, i have no idea what is going on with those square brackets. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.160.250.14 (talk) 07:02, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed (by someone else). Maikel (talk) 19:59, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 29 December 2014

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was moved. --BDD (talk) 16:06, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Pole-sitting → Pole sitting – The hyphen seems neither necessary nor appropriate. The current title seems contrary to WP:HYPHEN guidelines regarding hyphenation, as this is a compound noun rather than a compound modifier. See, for example, Tree sitting. —BarrelProof (talk) 02:45, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support – hyphen is inappropriate here. But notice usage when compound used as adjective: "pole-sittling champion", "pole-sitting record", "flag-pole sitting". Dicklyon (talk) 05:53, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Quesion Is this is case of WP:ENGVAR? a commpound word of this variety does fit the bill for British spelling.--Labattblueboy (talk) 13:59, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't heard of such a thing for British English. Can you find a couple of books that do it that way? Dicklyon (talk) 16:58, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Guinness Book of World Records uses the hyphenated, which is why I asked.--Labattblueboy (talk) 17:15, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't doubt that some sources hyphenate the noun. However, the hyphenation seems contrary to Wikipedia style conventions (and the general practice of writing in ordinary English). —BarrelProof (talk) 05:16, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support per MOS:HYPHEN and per basic English usage rules. And no, this is not an ENGVAR matter. NB: Guinness is a brewery, with a department devoted to tracking stats and records to settle bar bets; they are not English-language style and grammar experts. And they're not even British. Anyway, we should make sure that sources don't fully compound this as "polesitting"; many compound sport/game names are fused in this way, from the mid 20th century onward, especially when the root noun is not a sport/game by itself (or class thereof, in which the specific case is a division). Update: This N-gram [1] demonstrates that the unhyphenated, two-word usage dominates, even without eliminating properly-hyphenated adjectival usage (i.e., even when giving massive benefit of the doubt to the hyphen). This is basically proof the article should move as proposed. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 11:59, 15 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Asking the obvious

How did pole sitters go to the bathroom?– Gilliam (talk) 02:57, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

On St. Simeon

The information given here about St. Simeon does not agree with the information on the article on St. Simeon. Here it is said that he sat on a pole for 92 years and died impaled by the pole. Whereas the article on him says only 37 years and he was found dead still sitting on the pillar. This must be averiguated. Lucasdealmeidasm (talk) 01:47, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]